Is there a reason politicians wouldn’t want as many people as possible to be employed?
It’s a genuine question.
In the 1930s and 1940s, there was a lively conversation among economists about the theoretical possibility of “full unemployment”.
After seeing the wastefulness of mass unemployment in the Great Depression, and how unemployment was eradicated when governments put their countries on a war-footing, it made economists wonder if it was possible to create full employment in peace time?
The question inspired a wave of research.
Economists knew individual employers were incapable of…
